So how is everyone’s NCAA tourney bracket? I’ve got four going this year. Two for money, one for a t-shirt, and the fourth is a bracket I filled out for someone else as a favor (but she’s giving me the credit (and taking me to lunch with the winnings if she wins)). I’m doing well in all of them. At some point I was in first place in the t-shirt bracket, but fell to fourth by the end of the day. But I’m the highest one to pick Tennessee as the tourney winner, so as long as I mostly get the expected winners, with TN winning the whole thing, that t-shirt is mine.
The sheet I did for my coworker is in GREAT shape. Going into next week all but one of her picks is still in it. She can overtake the guy in first if Virginia and Houston each win their next games. I can also win with my own sheet if Tennessee wins the whole thing. We’ll see. The sheet I have in Denis’s work pool is just okay – I’m probably in the middle of the pack for his company’s pool. I also picked Tennessee for that one but have no idea if someone else picked Tennessee so I don’t know where I stand from that perspective.
In addition to watching basketball the entire weekend, I also took CootieGirl out for some driving practice. Her driver’s skills test is this Friday, and the one thing she had not tackled yet was parallel parking. I took her to a big shopping complex that had whole rows of parallel parking available, and we began going through the paces. She got frustrated within minutes and began crying.
“Why are you crying? I’m not yelling at you!” I exclaimed.
“I think these are Jacob tears right now, Mama,” she sobbed. Poor thing.
Out of 8-10 attempts she nailed the parallel parking only one time. And she just wanted to go home. So that’s what we did. That afternoon she did her last two hours with her driving instructor, who said she did a great job with the parallel parking, 3-point turns and driving in reverse. CG and I went out one more time over the weekend so I could see for myself, and she really did do a good job. I have confidence she’ll pass the test this Friday.
I then left for a 3-hour long hair appointment. Many years ago once my grey/silver started coming in I swore I’d stop coloring my hair, which I did. But limp lifeless long hair is annoying as all get out, and I finally asked my hair guy to put in highlights in the hopes it would 1) brighten things up a bit and 2) make my hair less limp. As he was finishing, he asked if I was interested in putting in a couple random streaks of color (green, blue, purple, red) under the top layer of my hair, as kind of a “peekaboo,” and with very little encouragement needed I agreed to magenta. So in addition to the ash-toned highlights, I have two dark pink streaks in my hair. I like it a lot.
Once home from that appointment on Saturday afternoon, I got CootieBoy started on some major homework for his AP class. He has been struggling and I emailed the teacher on Friday night to get some advice. She responded on Saturday afternoon with a lovely email of encouragement (“he is such a pleasant student and I do not want him to get discouraged”) and with that, the homework began. And WOW was it a lot of homework. He worked on it most of the afternoon/evening on Saturday and then on Sunday he literally spent the entire day – with breaks now and then – working on it. And still didn’t get it all done. It was crazy. Last night at midnight I told him to stop, and that he was done, and whatever grade he got, he got. I wouldn’t be mad if it was a ‘C’ (because it would be better than a zero if he didn’t do it at all).
“So when do we study for my quiz tomorrow morning?” he asked, bleary-eyed.
UGH. I had forgotten about the quiz.
“Well, I guess you’ll be getting up early to study for the quiz.”
This morning I woke him up early and together we sat for 20 minutes figuring out mnemonics to help him remember the capitals of 18 European countries. And because of them, *I* now know the capitals of those countries (map on the left notwithstanding).
- Kiev is in Ukraine “The Ukraine is weak because they have no chicken kiev to eat.”
- Sofia Bulgaria – is a fellow student at his school
- Tallinn in Estonia – think of an eagle with talons made of stone
- Budapest in Hungary – they have a lot of food in Hungary which causes them to have a lot of PESTS, whereas
- Bucharest is in Romania because they both have Rs
I could go all day, people. I helped him come up with 15 of the 18 and then he did the rest after I left for work, as well as studying for the second part of the quiz, involving each country’s main industry. I really hope he gets a good grade. He needs a “win” in this class because it has been a constant struggle for him. I keep waiting for PowerSchool to get updated with his grade, and I really hope it is a good one.
And that wasn’t even the entire weekend. Denis and I also went looking at TV room chairs in the hopes of replacing a really cheap chair that we got really just to have an extra seat, but it’s not a great chair. We wanted to use a portion of our tax refund to get a really nice chair that we would really like to sit in and be comfortable. We tested a couple, but the one that he and CG really liked was $700, and that was above the budget I wanted to spend for a chair that would only be used half the time, even if it was a nice chair-for-two that also reclined. We’ll see. I may change my mind about it if I can find some sort of discount or sale for it online.
And lastly, we spent the time swapping out our sofas. When we bought our house in 2006 I spent some of the profit from the sale of our NoNJ house on a REALLY nice custom sofa for the formal living room. It is a NICE sofa. And because we hardly ever use that room, the sofa has been used maybe 24 times in 12 years since we purchased it. It is LITERALLY still brand new. On the flip side, the used sofa we bought (end of 2017?) was already a cheaply made sofa and quickly became worn in our TV room. Rather than buy a new sofa for the TV room (the original plan for the tax refund money), we both agreed we should “shop at home” and just swap out the sofas. So yesterday afternoon we moved the nice sofa into the TV room and the used sofa into the living room we never use. And just like that we upgraded! Man, that living room sofa is a nice sofa. I had NO lower back pain sitting on that thing yesterday afternoon to watch basketball. I even took a brief 1-2 hour nap on it and it was glorious.
And that was my weekend. Phew. I’m tired just thinking about it.
